With President Donald Trump's tariffs generating significant revenue, the impact on federal coffers could make it hard for future administrations — including Democrats — to pull the plug on them, The New York Times reported Sunday.
One economist called the new revenue stream "addictive."
Through July, the U.S. collected $152 billion in custom duties and certain excise taxes, nearly doubling the $78 billion collected through the same time period in 2024. If left in place, tariff revenue could generate more than $2 trillion over the next decade, according to the report.
"I think this is addictive," Joao Gomes, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, told the Times. "I think a source of revenue is very hard to turn away from when the debt and deficit are what they are."
Even for a future Democrat administration.
"That's a hefty chunk of change," Tyson Brody, a Democrat strategist, told the Times. "The way that Democrats are starting to think about it is not that 'these will be impossible to withdraw.' It's: 'Oh look, there's now going to be a large pot of money to use and reprogram.'"
Former President Joe Biden, after slamming Trump for imposing tariffs on $300 billion of Chinese imports during his first administration and vowing to rescind them, kept them in place and hiked rates on China beginning last September. Biden jacked up tariff rates on electric vehicles from 27.5% to 100%, for example.
"All these experts said the world was coming to an end. They were all the chicken little: 'Sky is falling, sky is falling.' And not only did the sky not fall; the sky is full of $100 billion a year coming to the United States of America," Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Newsmax on Thursday.
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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